Four Walls, One Window
by Emsi Ceru
Summary: Cho Hakkai POV. An exploration of the walls around people's hearts, individual perceptions, personal weaknesses.
1. Chapter 1

This is my first fanfiction.  All characters and references to Gensomaden Saiyuki belong to Minekura Kazuya, I take no credit for her work.  

Spoilers for Gensomaden Saiyuki, Saiyuki Requiem (the Movie) and Saiyuki Reload are all likely to be present somewhere in this story.

I felt like exploring the idea of how each of the members of the Sanzo Ikkou (Sanzo traveling party) interact with the world.  What do they bring to the world that effects their perceptions of it, what their perceptions imply about personal vulnerabilities, etc.  I chose Hakkai's point of view for telling this story as he is among the more socially sensitive, and in addition, it's interesting to see how he's in the habit of uttering half-truths even when his only audience is himself.

While this may be a disappointment to some people, there is no Goku x Sanzo slash.  If you're looking for hot man sex in this chapter, I'm afraid you'll have to keep looking.  If I decide to write graphic sex, it most certainly won't be rated PG-13.  

Speaking of ratings, PG-13 for violence and strong language.

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_I read about a mountain, far to the west._

_It's a long distance away, but I heard the trees are older than the ones in our village.  So ancient, they're gnarled and bent like old women gossiping on street corners.  They say the earth lives and breathes there, Kanan.  I heard it sings._

"..kkai."

_It's a long road, Kanan, but won't you come with me?  Someday, if I work a little harder, we could go there.  Come with me, we could see it together. _

"Oi, Hakkai."

_On a road just like this.___

"Hakkai!"

Such is my surprise that my first instinct is to laugh.

I do.  And I'm apologizing in the same breath.

"I'm sorry," and laughter now has faded to an accent amused where I'm shaping words, catching up with what I'd missed in the meanderings of my thoughts.  "It's only a little further and we'll be in the next town," is a guessed answer.

It is with a mental wince at the resulting silence, when at the sound only of the Jeep's rumbling down this dirt path I realize I've given the wrong answer.  It would have been better to follow up the apology with 'What was that?' and risk betraying how deep in thought I'd been before my own name had pulled aside the shades to daylight.  My punishment, amusing as it sounds, is that now I'm uneasy with two sets of eyes curious and another set turned away.

Gojyo, mercifully, is the first to break the confused silence.

"You fallin' asleep on us at the wheel, Hakkai?  You missed the turn two miles ago."

Perhaps not so merciful.  I wonder now how long they had been trying to alert me to my lack of attention.

"Hn," says the priest by my side, who only lights his cigarette.  I remember the last snap of my name had been in Sanzo's voice, and that alone tells me it must have been enough attempts indeed from Goku and Gojyo to result in the priest raising his voice.

I stop the Jeep and leave my fingers cradled atop the curve of the steering wheel.  "My mistake," I confess needlessly, and the next words are hardly out of my mouth before I hear Goku's stomach protest.  "I thought it was a little further before the turn."

Normally, I would attempt to be as sheepish as I feel, save that I've noticed when I'm turning our ride around that Goku hasn't followed up his stomach's growling with the predictable 'I'm hungry'.  I glance sideways, and catch the violet of Sanzo's gaze midway through the same wordless action.  

I return my eyes to the road.

Sanzo sighs a stream of white smoke.

In this case, making use the rearview mirror instead is an idea I am eager to employ, and in it Goku's expression is hidden by the way his face is turned away from Gojyo.  By the set of his shoulders, he seems tense as a child worried the roof will crash in on his head in a storm.

I'm too busy trying to surreptitiously follow the direction of his gaze that I almost miss the turn again and take it a touch more sharply than I would have liked.  I should know better than to rely on the hope that Gojyo would miss the subtle; his look is so quick I can feel his gaze as surely as a palm to the back of my head.  Instead, I hear, "Shit!" even as I'm slamming the brakes.

The road ahead is bathed in the blazing crimson-gold of the setting sun, poured molten between solitary mountains clustered like children around the base of a king standing tall in their midst, but this is something to our backs now, and what's changing my eyes to the same shade as Gojyo's is painting dark shadows standing in our path.

At the screech of tires kicking up gravel, the next few seconds are a chaos of sound; the Sanzo traveling party wakes at last from the lull of too much time spent in the company of familiar companions and the constant rumble of Jeep's engine.

"Huh?  What's going on?"

"Tch.  They've been waiting for us."

"Dammit!  Can't they wait?  We're almost to town!"

"Youkai?"

"Of course, you stupid monkey!"

"I'm NOT a stupid mon--"

"SHUT--"

"Genjo Sanzo!  We will not let you pass!"

Silence falls on this stretch of gravel-strewn road filled with the creak of ancient trees too stubborn to give into the fate of most of the world and make this mountainous region dry and barren.  Dying sunlight has made our position a spotlight of gold-red, my monocle a miniature sun.

Sanzo's supreme irritation at being cut off by an upstart demon needs no words.  The thunder crack of a discharged Summoning Gun proves to the spokesman of the opposing party of youkai his fatal mistake enough.

My ear is still ringing from my proximity to the priest's firearm when I suggest as the youkai begin to comprehend just where their spokesman had suddenly disappeared off to as dust on the wind:  "The timing on that one was a little off, Sanzo."

"TCH.  He should know who he's talking to," irritably replies the priest, pulling back the hammer on his Summoning Gun once more.  "Keep driving!"

"But they're in the way--"

"Run them over!" snaps Sanzo.

"--Gojyo, would you and Goku do the honors?" I suggest - from the sound of things, a chance for our resident kappa and saru to get out and blow off steam is an opportune one I am loath to pass by.  

Besides, ramming youkai might dent the bumper.  I can hear them vacating the back of the Jeep while my fingers are drifting from the driver-side door as I step out.  Sanzo ignores the need to open and close doors entirely - I'm not quite sure how he manages this in robes, but he's scaled walls and rooftops wearing the same, so I'll assume there's a course for it.  

In between Sutra Recitation and Buddhism Sessions.

Goku and Gojyo are in the thick of battle and, in the midst of so much flying chain, crimson has become a color alive and (bleeding) breathing where sunset's gasping out its last minutes over the fray.  There are only five and that's too few for Goku to handle, let alone with a bored kappa, but I'm not too busy watching the dance of admonishment in chains that I'd fail to notice Goku's heart isn't in this.

It's in how he's flinging wide-eyed glances back the way we came instead of keeping an eye on the danger blocking our progress west.  It's in how Gojyo's had to swing awkwardly to catch a charging youkai in the side in time to spare him a body check into the ground.

Sanzo hasn't fired again yet.  I can't see his eyes beneath all that golden hair painted molten shades by the sun, but I know by how he tosses his cigarette away that he doesn't like what he sees.

Only an hour to our destination – a small mountainside village for news, supplies and a night's rest – and already youkai making themselves a nuisance.  Gojyo may well be wrapped up in the heat of combat, but he's as confused as I at Goku's uncharacteristic preoccupation.

The only one among us who has traded in confusion for displeasure is Sanzo.  Between two possibilities – this is either one of the priest's notorious moods or there is a silent understanding between he and the monkey – I'll lay my bet on previous history.

I may have inadvertently chosen a poor destination this time around, but there was no forewarning when our path had been laid out on the map in the previous town.

"Stop messing around, you stupid monkey!" bellows Gojyo as the last youkai hits the ground, shortly followed by his dismembered head.  Goku blinks around at the red-haired half-youkai, who continues on with his cigarette between his teeth.  "You can't be that hungry!"

The youth turns away and the sky dims to purple hues as the sun finally slips below the horizon.  I know my face is betraying my own concern, because it's something I see mirrored in Gojyo's, and Sanzo's hands are tucked into the sleeves of his robes.  

Goku breaks our silence when he's climbing back into the Jeep.

"…Sorry."  

"Let's keep moving," comes Sanzo's quick command.

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	2. Chapter 2

Chapter two is here!  After establishing that something is not right with the Ikkou (traveling party), I decided on something of a break.  This will, perhaps, be a little more in theme with how the Ikkou usually interacts with each other and the world around them.  As some readers have already guessed, the story's conflict centers around Goku, and because of this, I leave him just shy of the spotlight.  There will be plenty with Goku in it, but rather than inundate you with the details right away, I wanted to give everyone else their turn.

This is, in a lot of ways, Gojyo's chapter so far.   There's a silken undertone that I think belongs to his character, and a more direct method of storytelling here that makes it his.  Like Sanzo, Goku and Hakkai, things run more smoothly when you don't take the half-youkai at face value.  As candid and frivolous as he may seem at first glance, he really is a deep character.  I enjoy writing about him, and I hope to do a lot more in the future as I become more comfortable with voice of the story.

_Mahjongg-pai_ is a term used for the playing chips decorated with images and symbols used in the game of Mahjongg.

Rated PG for mild language.  Hakkai's opinion of God is taken from the manga, they are not my own religious views.

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"Excuse me, do you have any vacancies?"

The inn's attendant, a young woman whose black hair had been thrown back into a braid coiled behind her head, looked up from the guest ledger and smiled uneasily.

Given that the sight she is encountered with is four possible guests, all strangers dressed in hooded cloaks with sunglasses, I do not blame her.  Rather, I admire her tact.  But this is perhaps a characteristic rather typical for me to find little fault with; the ability to smile.

"All four of you?" inquires she.

"Yes, please," I reply, and notice out of the corner of my eye that Gojyo has joined me at the front desk.  

As the woman slides the ledger towards me, lying open to a page half-new, I fall silent and only take the pen cradled there.  Predictably, Gojyo takes advantage of this respite in polite business transactions (in this case, renting a room) to … get to know the staff better.

"Hey woman, what's your name?"

I notice the last entry was written so long ago the ink has begun to fade.  This village doesn't see much business these days.

"Eh?" says the woman, surprised.

"Your name," Gojyo repeats, and his voice is a purr when it passes my shoulder to address the ebon-haired woman.  "Just want to know the name of such a pretty girl working so hard here by herself."

I begin to write out the usual aliases, lest news of the famous (or rather, infamous) Sanzo traveling party draw youkai to this small mountain village.

"Ah," the woman sounds politely nervous.  "My husband runs this inn, and…"

She trails off.  I can almost hear Gojyo's hopes deflating.  I choose this moment to interrupt.

"I'm sorry, but could I ask you something about the room?"  If I sound earnest, this is my own fault for being careless.  Gojyo steps back and lights a cigarette; I can hear the easy stride of his boots on the wood of the floor, the flint of a lighter.  He's trying to be nonchalant.

"Of course," says the woman, who has started to take the ledger back.  I give her the pen.

"How many windows does the room have?"

Confusion is written as neatly as print on _mahjongg-pai_ on her features and for the first time I realize her eyes are hazel.  I laugh.

And apologize.  "I'm sorry," but to say it's a strange question again would only draw attention to it.  Gojyo must have returned to where Sanzo is standing by the door, because I hear the low buzz of commotion that typically signals when Goku and the kappa will start bickering.

This is a familiar pattern, and I do not mind.

"It's no matter," I quickly say when the woman's gaze starts to glance their way.  I can hear Goku complain that he's hungry and I don't have to look to verify that this at least is a sign he's back to his usual composure.

She glances down at the ledger.  "Are all of you brothers?"

"Well…"

I only smile, and I am saved from lying when there is a crash behind me and a burst of raised voices.  Now, I don't believe in God, this is a thing I've held steadfast to since my childhood, but I'm thanking a nameless one for the fact that we've already paid.

"—t least I'm not hitting on married women, ero-gappa!"

"—ho said you could eavesdrop, baka-zaru?!"

"…Oi."

"Don't call me a stupid monkey, sexually harassing kappa!"

"Then stop flapping your trap, saru!"

"I'm not a saru, red cockroach!"

"OI."

Indeed.  Things seem to have returned to normal.  I quickly ask when dinner will be served of the now very bewildered female attendant.

The inn was indeed empty save for us.  By luck and timing, the usual locals who drop in to visit for a fine meal were all occupied with other activities this evening, so we had the dining room to ourselves, and could afford to shed our disguises with little concern that our appearance would start any rumors.

I guess it's foolish to claim one does not believe in God when one's meals and living expenses are paid for on a golden card bestowed upon the priest by the Three Aspects of Buddha, but there really is a fine line there.  It's one thing to grow up being taught of a benevolent, omnipotent, paternal God who would destroy all that opposed His followers with but one sweep of His hand; it is entirely another to have Quan Yin, the Goddess of Mercy, step in through the door, lip lock with your former roommate of three years and attempt the same to a wounded and unconscious Sanzo as a form of Heavenly blood transfusion.

I don't believe in God.  I can be a smiling fool for it.

If God is the sun, we have but one, and that one is sitting here at the table working on his third can of beer.

He's not taking supplicants.  He has his hands full of three irreverent followers.

There is only one thing I pride myself on when planning out our subsequent destinations and it is not on quick progress to our goal.  It is - and this will never reach the history books, of that I am sure – the realization that any rumors or entries in tourist books claiming that a certain inn carried excellent food and good wine were indeed true.  

Gojyo and Goku will eat anything put before them.  If Sanzo approves, so much the better.  I can claim I'm only here for the wine, and all four of us have ready excuses for being in the company of the other in case of arguments. 

After the tension of the last leg of our journey to this village, it is a relief to see everyone, for the most part, back to their usual patterns of behavior.

"Hey, Hakkai."

I turn with a smile ready at the corners of my mouth.  It is Gojyo, who pats a fresh pack of cigarettes into his palm, looks at this instead of me.  By this I know he has something serious to ask, so I stop walking.

Goku, sated on the recent meal, scampers past us in the narrow hallway to catch up with Sanzo, who objects to the youth's exuberant sleeve-tugging with a long-suffering stoicism that suggests he too was not about to complain over Goku's return to his usual good humor.

Gojyo is tapping a cigarette free of the pack now, so I am courteous in my curiosity.  "Would you like me to wait?"

"Don't you do enough of that?"

I don't know why he has suddenly become confrontational, until I can see the tension in his shoulders.  I can't remember a time today when it had left them in the comfortable slouch he usually assumes, and realize dinner's normalcy had been the kappa playing at being the swindler.  For a moment, I am ashamed.

"Ha ha ha."  I turn my eyes away, down, and smile.  "Maybe."

"Nf," mutters Gojyo around his cigarette.  He stops to light it, and after a ceiling-ward exhale he repeats, "Maybe."

This is a language apart from normal speech.  You live long enough in the company of another, and entire years of conversation melt together until morsels of innocuous phrases have a meaning of their own.  Entirely different.  He leans against the wall instead of me, and I am grateful because the hallway is narrow.

And the local staff would get incriminating ideas.

I listen to the minute crackle of tobacco burning away through a long inhale, and soon I find the cigarette offered into my view.  I blink at it, and then at Gojyo, who turns crimson eyes away and speaks while he leaves the burnt offering in his fingers.  I take it.  He knows I do not often smoke, so I wonder why he offers now.

"That droopy-eyed monk changed our check-out date."

"Sorry?"

"We're leaving the day after tomorrow."

This is a warning in itself:  Unless there is some danger ahead, or some special precaution we must take, or we're recovering from a particularly unpleasant youkai encounter, we always leave after one day's rest.  I try to remember when or how he could have changed our arrangements, that perhaps he could have given some sign of his reasons while doing so, but I must have not been present.

But Sanzo had lingered a moment behind while we had proceeded to drop our meager belongings off in the room, else I would have been a little skeptical.  But, then again, this is Gojyo.  "The day after tomorrow?"

"Yeah.  Thought I'd let you know."  Gojyo retrieves his cigarette from my fingers and brushes past me as he leaves the hallway.  "I'm taking a bath.  See ya."

I glance at my fingers, painted gold by the lamplight overhead.  So he means to let me ask Sanzo about the change in plans.

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	3. Chapter 3

I apologize for chapter three, which is a lot of boring silence and even more boring dialogue.  This is the most quiet of all the chapters so far, I think.  After things seemed to slip back into normalcy in chapter two after chapter one had been establishing that all is not right in the Ikkou, I felt the need to beat the concept into my unfortunate readers' heads some more.

Hah!

This is also the chapter where the title of this story finally starts playing an obvious part.  In a way, this is the true beginning of the story, while the first two chapters are establishing it, setting the scene in my opinion.

I am currently on vacation (or the last leg of it, really), so please enjoy the quick updates while they last, because I'm afraid they'll be a lot more spaced out after this.  One kind reader comments that the story has a lazy feel to it – this makes me very happy to hear, as I'd hate to think I was rushing this story.  Too slow can be a bad thing, though, so I will do my best to keep the pace at a happy medium.  

Please forgive the choppy, almost abrupt language of this chapter; being the most tense scene I have written yet, I felt the change in pace a necessary evil to the rules of proper grammar.  

I hope you enjoy reading this as much as I enjoyed writing it.

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_Would you like another cup?_

It hardly needs saying, not when a door left open is an invitation unvoiced simply because the smell of coffee is hanging warm on the air of these few rented rooms, heavy as temple incense where cigarette smoke's left its bite in it.

But I say it anyway, because the familiarity makes this smile genuine, and my knuckles are rapping gently against the doorjamb already.  I think it is the knock more than the voice that brings Sanzo's attention up from where he's cupped his hand around a newly lit cigarette, and this is a fact because all the while he'd been watching the newspaper unfolded before him.

We had been lucky with accommodations; our room had an adjacent study, but sparsely furnished.

A table, two chairs.

Two windows had been a matter of unspoken disapproval before and it's the same case now.  Two windows in a single room meant three places to keep half an eye on when alone, and for a priest paranoid of youkai ambush, that was as bothersome as...

As bothersome as three followers.  To keep half an eye on, when he means to be alone.

Three places.  Door.  Two windows.  A single room with one window, one door was always safer than one with two or none at all; just one eye on either and there was ever one option for escape if the other had unwanted company.

We had become accustomed to the habit of denying the existence of any second, deviant windows by simply pulling the shades tight over them.  It was generally agreed upon that the window ceased to exist.  It wasn't an option anymore, only the one acknowledged.

And this time, Sanzo had acknowledged the one window by opening it to the hush of evening breeze.

The other did not exist.  The door, however, did.

"...Nh."  So the priest's answer was given in a one-handed reach for an empty mug off the table, holding it aloft.  His other occupied with the frame of reading glasses he reserved for newspapers alone.

It occurs to me that in all this time I am never quite sure just how he wants it - his coffee.  Where one day he's been content with it black, I've seen him stir sugar in while distracted by newsprint, or the urgent requests of Goku for dumplings.

Nevertheless, I dutifully pour.

The pot takes a section of the table apart from the other neighboring occupants.  A glass ashtray, two now steaming coffee mugs, a silver lighter, a newspaper.

"Do you mind if I join you?" I ask, after the prerequisite pause, fingers cradled on the back of a chair on the opposite side of the lone table.  This is an old ritual.  I pause, I ask.  He pauses, he nods, disinterested in all that does not impede his reading.

Silence undoubtedly will fill the next few minutes entirely if I do not find a tactful way to bring up the topic Gojyo had alluded to earlier; it is my choice whether to be direct or lead to it in the usual manner.  

It isn't long into my first draught of hot coffee before I cradle the mug in my hands and decide to keep to tradition.

Cigarette smoke is only an acrid tinge in the air when the night keeps blowing into this silent room.

"Gojyo and Goku have settled down," I attempt.  I blame myself for the distraction I've found in how the window looks like a ghost's maw with moonlight clinging to the folds of restless curtains.  I expect no response, and I get none.

"I suppose there's little time to enjoy the quiet, though."  My fingers are leeching warmth from where it's radiating through the mug from the coffee within, while I'm smiling at it, "Since things will be more or less back to the usual after tomorrow."

This is as close to asking a direct question as tradition would allow.  I am, after all, the traveling party's designated swindler.

I do not wait long for Sanzo's response.  He sounds suspicious.

"Ah?"

Now I can afford to close my eyes because it is the sound of his progress through the contents of the newspaper that is all I need.  Paper dry whispers and sighs white from cigarette smoke have become more real than the nocturnal chirping beyond the open window.

I know without looking up that he's listening when the paper doesn't crinkle in his fingers for fourteen silent seconds.

I give him two more.  Only by then will he have become expectant, and he is because he speaks the moment I glance up again.

"After tomorrow," he quotes.

"...Hm?"

"Finish."

"Oh," and here it's fitting to pretend surprise that he expects me to continue, but to push this too far would have him return to silence rather than acknowledge a thing named pointless by my own self-depreciative maneuvering. "It's nothing, but...  I heard Gojyo say something about a delay."

Sanzo lifts a hand to smoke, and the curtain by the window lifts like a phantom with a change in the wind.  I'm watching his cigarette when I choose to be direct.  "Are we really leaving the day after tomorrow?"

The priest's cigarette sits on the edge of the ashtray when he frees his hand to return to the newspaper.

"Ah." Yes. The muted violence of the priest's eyes fixates now on the text between his hands.  

"Isn't that a little unusual?"

I watch the cigarette burn until ash drops into the tray in a soundless crumple.  The cricket's singing is mere white noise in the silence.

"Sanzo?" There's a warning in how long he's taking to answer, but I am concerned at an alien note in my voice that I thought I had been careful to filter out.  My eyes have left the cigarette's slow death on the glass wall of the ashtray, and for a moment, I am anxious if I've overlooked some danger or eavesdropper.

I am still searching my line of questioning for fatal flaws when Sanzo folds the newspaper and stands with a wooden scrape of the chair on the floor.  It sounds harsh as a child's fingernails on slate in all this silence.

My coffee is cold in the mug between my palms.  I know there is no immediate danger external because he had taken the time to leave the newspaper folded neatly on the table, which is why I don't meet his gaze when he stays a second longer standing.

I don't need my eyes to know when he's turned to leave; the whisper of robes is sign enough.  His cigarette is left to its self-destructive nature, burning away into ash.

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End file.
